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I decided to simply make the sheriff of the small town dominated by a cult to be a high cult leader. He always wears mirror shade sunglasses to hide his stigmata of mirrored irises. He should have all the intimidation and swagger of a powerful small town sheriff with an added edge of supernatural menace. However, I'm not sure how to give him that menace. Most of the supernatural merits seem pretty tame. Do you have any suggestions as to how to make him more of a threat? Is there a way for a cult priest to curse players or afflict them?

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I decided to simply make the sheriff of the small town dominated by a cult to be a high cult leader. He always wears mirror shade sunglasses to hide his stigmata of mirrored irises. He should have all the intimidation and swagger of a powerful small town sheriff with an added edge of supernatural menace. However, I'm not sure how to give him that menace. Most of the supernatural merits seem pretty tame. Do you have any suggestions as to how to make him more of a threat? Is there a way for a cult priest to curse players or afflict them?

Well, this isn't so much a power for the sheriff himself, but you can always just say that there's some form of Infrastructure in the town that enhances him somehow (e.g. he has Influence (Intimidation) and can spend WP in place of Essence to activate it), or you could crib sorcery rules from that Mummy dark era for curses, or you could just have an Imperative or a minor Angel Fettered to him and helping him out.

Really this all depends on whether the PCs are going to be mortals or Demons. If they're Demons, I don't think there's a tremendous amount he'll be able to do.

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Really this all depends on whether the PCs are going to be mortals or Demons. If they're Demons, I don't think there's a tremendous amount he'll be able to do.

Thanks for your suggestions! I'd like him to be quite scary and unpleasant for mortals, but not so much perhaps to demons. He will be an easier challenge to them especially since he doesn't know about demons nor that the players are not simply mortals.

A malevolent and domineering sheriff in an area where cell phones mysteriously don't work would be a threat to an average mortal. He probably would have some increased resistance to demon embeds, but his deputies won't. This would give the PCs a chance to shine as well as perhaps some motivation. ("He's got Martha in jail on some trumped up drug charge! What to we do?")

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Thanks for your suggestions! I'd like him to be quite scary and unpleasant for mortals, but not so much perhaps to demons. He will be an easier challenge to them especially since he doesn't know about demons nor that the players are not simply mortals.

A malevolent and domineering sheriff in an area where cell phones mysteriously don't work would be a threat to an average mortal. He probably would have some increased resistance to demon embeds, but his deputies won't. This would give the PCs a chance to shine as well as perhaps some motivation. ("He's got Martha in jail on some trumped up drug charge! What to we do?")

Murder By Improbability until the cheese stands alone.

It'd be like the Final Destination movies from the sheriff's perspective.

Malkydel: "And the Machine dictated; let there be adequate illumination."
Yossarian: "And lo, it was optimal."

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It'd be like the Final Destination movies from the sheriff's perspective.

That's one way to approach it. To the extent that any deputy or sheriff are stigmatic, its effects are limited:

If the target is touched by the supernatural in any way, however, then Murder by Improbability does not function in this manner. Instead, it makes the character extremely, possibly fatally, unlucky — but the demon still needs to nudge that character’s fate in the direction of death. (DtD p170).

Your idea is a good one, but I don't know how much you need to know about a person for MbI to work. Does the PC have to know the victim's name? See them once? How do you play it?

The thing I like about this set-up is that it provides a nice sandbox (Small Town Dominated by Evil Cult) in which the players can learn about the gaming system and the scope of their abilities. There are dangers and the possibility of Compromise, but a clever player should be able to handle it pretty well.

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Four Minutes Ago is also good if you want a Final Destination effect; to an external viewer, it also is going to cause horrendous coincidences and so forth that kill people (or whatever else the PCs did).

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That's one way to approach it. To the extent that any deputy or sheriff are stigmatic, its effects are limited:

Well, I was operating on the knowledge that only the Sheriff was Stigmatic for sure - deputies and other officers, maybe. MbI could winnow aware their support with fatal accidents. The Demons could make weird attacks against the remainder with Cause and Effect.

Malkydel: "And the Machine dictated; let there be adequate illumination."
Yossarian: "And lo, it was optimal."

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Well, I was operating on the knowledge that only the Sheriff was Stigmatic for sure - deputies and other officers, maybe. MbI could winnow aware their support with fatal accidents. The Demons could make weird attacks against the remainder with Cause and Effect.

I'm not criticizing - your idea is a good one. It's precisely that sort of thinking the I want my players to pursue so that they can see what works and what doesn't.

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I am prepping my first DtD game for tomorrow atm, I will run it and it's going to be a one-shot, the one from the core book ("How an angel dies").
I will use the characters from the ready made characters book. Right now I am realizing that they have lots of Embeds but no Exploits at all, not even in the advanced sheets. That feels odd.

Question: Should I add an Exploit per character sheet or can I just ignore them for now, given that we're all new to demon and it's a lot to take in as it is?

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My players have never played Demon, they know little about it. So I won't ask them. And I am new to it as well, although I at least read the book. So a "well, you decide" answer does not even help me here sorry. Yes or no please:

Can I just let the Exploits be for now and still run an enjoyable, successful game of Demon?

P.S. Yes I might be overthinking this right now because I'm damn nervous about tomorrow.

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Seconding: Exploits are nice and dramatic, but especially starting out, using only Embeds might work better - they are more covert, and don't risk Compromise, meaning the PCs don't have to pursue Pacts to patch their Covers up as much. There are plenty of other methods to spend Aether and show-case Compromise.

Malkydel: "And the Machine dictated; let there be adequate illumination."
Yossarian: "And lo, it was optimal."